Storytelling Drives Social Media Marketing: Content Builds Communities

This is part two of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they determine how storytelling drives social media marketing.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, when we mix together the three ingredients in our social media marketing formula (content, connections, and participation/influence), the resulting campaign or program will ideally create an engaged community of members that will not only be responsive to your story – but also will want to spread the word and even ‘forward’ specific content assets like video clips to their friends.

Of course content remains the key ingredient and foundation for developing community.  Here at TPN we’ve created a layered content model (pyramid) that aims to breaks down the different types, sources and role of content that exist within most socially-enabled organizations.  In this Content Model and our related solutions, we focus on three distinct layers that are necessary to initially attract and then keep an audience coming back to your community – Expert  Content (created by thought leaders), Curated Content (created by industry experts), and User-Generated Content (created by community players).

 

For many companies, the challenge lies in picking the right content and putting it in the right format, to get people engaging in the right way on the right channel.  Fortunately we can look at public social networks for some great examples and inspiration.  For instance, I like to think of Facebook as a content portal as much as a social network, with the most popular activity being people posting and sharing and commenting on photos.  And therefore Photo contests – like those powered by Offerpop are some of the best and most popular ways for marketers to building community around content (photos), connections (friends) and participation (in a contest).

 

 

It’s all about the formula.  And creating the right content.  Of course, once your community is established, you have to feed it with more content!  One of the ways to do this is via curation, which we’ll discuss the next time.

Also, in case you missed it, check out Part 1 of our series, where I break down my formula to successfully telling stories via social media marketing campaigns.  Thanks for reading!

 

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email,abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Tyler Pyburn is a host at The Pulse Network and can be reached on his twitter or e-mail, tpyburn@thepulsenetwork.com